The internationally renowned Portuguese festival has consistently presented a forward-thinking programme featuring some of the most revered electronic music and cross-disciplinary work by artists from around the world. Including both new and established artists, Semibreve has commissioned performances and work by Cluster and Harmonia member Roedelius, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Steve Hauschildt, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Andy Stott, Dopplereffekt, Laurel Halo, Ben Frost, Klara Lewis, Demdike Stare, Jon Hopkins, Vladislav Delay, Alva Noto, Fennesz, Emptyset, Ryoji Ikeda, The Haxan Cloak and many more, as well as presenting an informed programme of new work produced by students from Portuguese universities in the digital art’s field and local Portuguese artists.

Semibreve’s emphasis on a carefully curated programme, its thoughtfully-considered and stunning locations and venues, together with an ethos centred around inclusiveness and community by promoting a varied programme and affordable tickets, has brought about sold-out events and well-deserved critical acclaim and support from the likes of The Wire, XLR8R, The Guardian, The Quietus, FACT, Thump, Resident Advisor, Independent, Clash Magazine and Dazed and Confused Magazine.

William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 25 years in NYC. His haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life, resounding with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, “The Disintegration Loops”, received international critical acclaim and its recognized as an ambient music masterpiece. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork. Basinski will present his latest work, “A Shadow in Time (for David Robert Jones)”.

Jlin first came to public attention featuring on the Bangs and Works footwork compilations at the start of the decade. Her debut album on Planet Mu – “Dark Energy” – displayed a unique creative talent that outgrew any easy genre tags, placing her in her own musical zone of hyper-rhythmic cuts that displayed a tension between anger and colourful euphoria. Embarking on a world tour soon after the album release she grew a reputation as a formidable live act, and the album ended up in the top 10’s and 20’s of album lists for 2015 for lots of music publications. In 2017 she follows up her debut with “Black Origami”, one of the most regarded electronic music albums of the decade.

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35 years ago, Telectu, the historical duo of Jorge Lima Barreto and Vitor Rua, released “Belzebu”, one of the most important Portuguese records of the exploratory electronic music of the XX century. “Belzebu” is regarded by a new generation of electronic musicians, such as Pete Swanson or Visible Cloaks, as a masterpiece and a well-kept secret. Commissioned by Teatro Maria Matos and Semibreve, Telectu, now comprised of Vitor Rua and António Duarte, will bring back the original scores, instruments and visual elements to reproduce the Belzebu live show. “Belzebu” will also be reissued in June as an LP and as originally conceived by the duo back in 1982.

Keith Fullerton Whitman and Pierce Warnecke will also premiere a new collaboration, commissioned by Semibreve, that will merge live audio and video synthesis. Keith Fullerton Whitman is an American Composer, Performer, and Writer living in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently in the process of realizing a series of geographically & conceptually aligned Live Electronic Music works under the “Redactions” banner, and has recently done so for the GRM’s Immersion festival in Paris, Documenta 14 in Athens, Human Resources in Los Angeles, MaerzMusik’s The Long Now in Berlin, The Geometry of Now in Moscow, Standards in Milan, and at the Don Buchla Memorial Concerts in San Francisco. Pierce Warnecke is sound and video artist from the US, based in Europe for over a decade. He works equally in the sonic and visual domains via performances, installations and compositions. His works have been commissioned by CTM Festival, Deutschlandradio Kultur, ORF Musikprotocoll and Mirage Festival.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer and performer of electroacoustic music. Living at the romantic intersection between analog and digital, organic and binary, human and artificial, her music is a sonic utopia about emerging machine intelligence, human desire of pattern detection and rips of love in the invariable texture of the matrix. Her minimalist focus arises from a meditation on primary waveforms, overtone-centered patterns and the polyrhythm of harmonics, mainly rooted in the exploration of the polyphonic and polyrhythmic potential of voltage-controlled sequencers. Her last album “POC – Patterns of Consciousness”, was released by the American label Important Records in 2017. This show is a collaboration with SHAPE network and Maintenant Festival.

SØS Gunver Ryberg is known for her live music performances, multichannel performances, dance/performance art, commissioned productions, installation works and studio composition. Recent works have included composition and sound design for the video game, “INSIDE”, and 2 multichannel compositions commission for the Danish Royal Library. Recent appearances have included BoilerRoomTV and Atonal Festival Berlin. She was awarded the Danish Composers’ Society’s prize and from The Danish Art Foundation in 2011.